Stupid and Dangerous, Even for Texas

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Politicians of the right-wing persuasion, and particularly those who happen to be Republicans and reside in southern states, seem to have an innate fear of drag queens, a group of people whom they believe are hellbent on taking their football-playing, gun-toting, tobacco-chewing fourteen-year-old boys and turning them into purse-carrying sissies.  They don't want want drag queens anywhere near decent children, and they don't even want books that mention drag queens in the libraries.  It's all about protecting children.

This week legislation finished making its way through the Texas legislature and is now headed to Governor Abbott for his signature.  That bill will make things incredibly more dangerous for Texas school children - far more so than occasional entertainment by men wearing make-up and frocks.

The new Texas legislation would allow schools to do away with trained and licensed school counselors and instead replace them with unlicensed and uncertified religious chaplains.  The chaplains could be volunteers, or they could be paid through funds which have been allocated for school safety and security.

There are many fine people who volunteer to work with children in many activities, people whose motivations are pure almost to the point of saintliness.  But there are also others, people who gravitate to where children are so that they can satisfy their baser urges.  These opportunistic sexual leaches go where the children are - and scout troops, church groups, and schools are all very common targets.

When people go through training and a certification process in order to work with children, they not only acquire skills and knowledge that will help them in that work, they also are carefully observed by teachers and professional mentors who can pick up on signs that indicate unsuitability for the profession.  They are, in essence, screened,  and those whose motivations to work with children are less than altruistic can be eliminated.

The people running the state of Texas may feel very sanctimonious in their crusade to keep drag queens and knowledge of drag queens away from the children of their state, but they are about to throw open the schoolhouse doors to people who really do pose a threat to children.  Turning the psychological care of children over to people with no training who just want to "help children" is not only shortsighted, it is stupid and very, very dangerous.

(Perhaps if we had mandatory training and certification requirements for people who want to serve in our governing bodies, bad laws like this one in Texas would never be an issue.  Just sayin' . . . )